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Riding Man author Mark Gardiner provides insight into motorcycle racing, history, and industry news. A focus on road racing is to be expected from an ex-Isle of Man TT racer but Backmarker also covers everything from flat track to electric bikes.

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Monday, December 5, 2016

In the course of researching my new triviabook, I stumbled across a bunch of stories that made me think, How has it taken
me this long to learn about this? One was the story of NASA’s ‘space minibikes’.
Another was related to the Hells Angels and Vietnam. Of course, I already knew
that Sonny Barger had volunteered a biker force for duty behind the lines in
Vietnam. But I did not realize there actually was a military unit known as Nams
Angels. Here’s their story…

A little over fifty years ago, Ralph ‘Sonny’
Barger – the president of the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels – volunteered
his gang for duty in Vietnam.

Barger at press conference (Bay Area Television Archive)

Barger reading his telegram to LBJ. (*Although it’s often suggested that he spelled ‘guerrilla’ as ‘gorilla’, I’ve never seen a printed copy of the text, so I transcribed it correctly. He meant guerrilla; he was not offering himself as a breeder and trainer of actual apes.)

The press conference, which was held on
November 19, 1965, featured Barger and four of his ‘associates’. It was held in
the storefront office of Dorothy Connors Bail Bonds. You can follow this link to watch KRON-TV’s report. The
journalist who introduces the report can scarcely conceal his own disbelief.
The segment opens with footage of an earlier, undated confrontation between
Hells Angels and anti-war protesters.

In the fall of 1965, Americans were still not
used to big, unruly war protests; those would come later. Until the marchers
reached the Hells Angels, things seem to have been generally peaceful. TV
footage portrays a fairly cooperative and respectful relationship between
thousands of mostly draft-age protesters and an approachable police presence
that is positively quaint, compared to what we’d see today.

That ended when Barger started screaming,
“Why don’t you people go home, you pacifists!” A cop in standard uniform pushed
an Angel back, ordering him to “Back off” and a moment later a 300-pound biker known
as ‘Tiny’ was cracked on the skull with a nightstick. Ironically the only
police injury occurred when that huge dude slumped to the pavement, breaking a
cop’s leg on the way down.

Barger’s often described as a ‘veteran’,
which is consistent with the ür-myth of soldiers returning from war and forming
motorcycle gangs. The truth is a little more prosaic; Sonny did join the army,
but was honorably discharged after a few months when they realized he was
actually only 17.

Hunter S. Thompson noted that the march
organizers – a loose group of student leftists led by Jerry Rubin – hoped to
find kindred spirits in the bikers. But that was not to be; the Angels may have
been disenfranchised too, but they were unquestioningly patriotic.

All of which led to the surreal press
conference in which Barger announced that the Hells Angels would not attend the
VDC march scheduled for November 21, because he was sure that those pacifists
would provoke the bikers to violence, which would in turn encourage the public
to place its misguided sympathies with the protesters.

“We
haven’t been told to do nothin’. This is our own decision. We think it’s best
for the country,” said Barger. When asked what the Angels would do instead,
Barger added, “We’ll do what we usually do on a Saturday; probably go to the
bar and drink a few suds.”

A reporter, perhaps thinking that outlaw
bikers – outcasts themselves – would make natural allies with student radicals,
asked Barger whether, while he disagreed with the students’ position, he at
least defended their right to free speech and assembly. But he literally waved
off the question; he never took the bait. (Barger, still in his 20s at the
time, comes across as alternately media savvy and, at other moments, hopelessly
naïve.)

Barger then read a telegram that he claimed
to have sent Lyndon Johnson…

Dear Mr.
President,

On behalf of
myself and my associates I volunteer a group of loyal Americans for
behind-the-lines duty in Vietnam. We feel that a crack group of trained guerrillas* will demoralize the Viet Cong and advance the cause of freedom. We are
available for training and duty immediately.

Sincerely,

Ralph Barger

Hells
Angels, Oakland CA

If LBJ ever saw the telegram, he certainly
didn’t take Barger up on the offer. But ironically, within a few years, there
actually was small group of biker-warriors taking the fight to the Viet Cong.

Left to right: Dennis Verbrigghe (Rock City, MI), James Linder (Indianapolis), Scott Anderson (Balsin Lake, WI), James Tomusco (Lorain, OH). [Are any of these guys still riding? If any Backmarker readers have information about these men, please contact me – MG]

Maybe those CB175s lacked the intimidation factor of the Hells Angels' Harleys, but there's something about being backed up by Jeep with a belt-fed machine gun. Brady F. Rosemeyer (Bishop, CA) handles the belt while Ron Jones (Bath, ME) fires the M-60. These guys provided the backup for the Angels on patrol.

So who were the real Nams Angels? The Recon
Patrol of the 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry, U.S. Army.

In 1969, the 3-22nd’s area of operations was
War Zone C, up on the Cambodian border. It was 1,000 square kilometers of marsh
and jungle, crisscrossed by a maze of small trails, that served as a hideout
and staging area for Viet Cong guerrillas.

The U.S. Army set up camps in there to interdict
that activity, and those camps became targets themselves, of VC hit-and-run
mortar and rocket attacks.

The commander of 3rd Battalion,
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Carmichael, seized upon the idea of using motorcycles
as a way for reconnaissance patrols to cover more ground – identifying VC
mortar sites, for example.

Carmichael acquired at least four
motorcycles, which appear to be pretty much bone-stock Honda CB175 street
bikes. Patrols rode out at dawn. I imagine that Sonny Barger would’ve scoffed
at those 175cc rice burners – they were hardly intimidating enough for Hells
Angels. But the four bikes had a chase vehicle, which was a Jeep with a mounted
M-60.

Further up the chain of command, they were
skeptical – but not for long. "At first I was very leery
of the whole idea, but now I am confident it was a good one," said Major
Joseph Hacia.

I love the idea of four guys – some likely were draftees – who
were probably a lot happier to ride those CB175s than they would’a been patrolling
on foot. I don’t know how long the 3-22nd’s motorcycle patrols went on, but
they were around long enough for those guys to get patched.

Which brings me back to the Hells Angels. I’ve always thought of
Barger’s offer – which was almost certainly a publicity stunt, but one that
reflected his own genuinely-held views – as one of the first instances of a
phenomenon that’s now common: Disenfranchised groups that one might expect to
be anti-establishment, but which instead adopt militant patriotism.

Ironically, at the same time as the real Nams Angels were patrolling War Zone C, a bikesploitation movie was being filmed in Thailand, called ‘Nams Angels’. It was obviously inspired by Barger’s offer to fight behind enemy lines. By the time it was released, they’d changed the name to ‘The Losers’.

I mean, really… The Hells Angels were persecuted by the cops,
vilified in the media, and completely ostracized by conservative, mainstream
America. And yet they were violently opposed to the student radicals that
wanted to stick it to The Man. It seemed that the old saying, “The enemy of my
enemy is my friend” no longer held true.

There may be a lesson in reconciliation in all of this.

A few weeks after that press conference, the beat novelist Ken
Kesey organized a meeting. A delegation of anti-war protesters came to Barger’s
house, where they all dropped acid. Although Barger never really changed his
rhetoric, the bikers and the protesters maintained an uneasy truce for the
remainder of the Vietnam war.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

There's been buzz about competitive lap times set by SBK bikes and riders, vs MotoGP bikes and riders, at the Jerez test. That reminds me of the famous Gardiner Machine experiments, in which I used a time machine to transport bone-stock production bikes back in time. My goal was to determine the fastest production bikes' Gardiner Factor. That is, how far back in time would they have to go, before they were as fast as the fastest prototype racing machines? Current answer: 20-30 years. That's way, way better than anything you can say about the car world. Bikes rule.

Not long ago, the buzz among nerdy MotoGP and SBK fans was
that, on a rare shared test day, at least one Superbike lapped faster than any
of the attending premier-class bikes and riders. The nerdiest nerds then
pointed out that it wasn’t really an apples-to-apples comparison, because the
SBK teams’ Pirelli tires worked much better on the cold track that day. (Maybe
it was more like an apples-to-quinces.)

But, it’s pretty clear: The mere fact we were all fascinated
with the comparison pretty much proves that a.) MotoGP engineers aren’t getting
that much marginal speed despite an exponentially larger spend; and, b.) the
top SBK riders don’t give much away to their snottier peers in MotoGP.

Would a top Superbike rider on a top bike actually be
competitive in a MotoGP race? I doubt it.

Whenever I think of radically different machines on track at
the same time, I am reminded of the glory days of Formula USA, where
anything-goes rules pitted bikes as different as 1,100cc superbikes against
250GP bikes (with nitrous oxide push-to-pass capability).

I don’t have to go back that far though. I’m traveling and
away from my records. But if memory serves it was around the mid-‘90s when the
top 250GP qualifying times were nearly competitive with 500GP times. That
realization prompted Aprilia to build a radically overbore (was it also
stroked?) 400cc version of their 250, which they entered in the 500 class. It
went nowhere. The speed of the fastest 250s was also probably a factor in Honda’s
decision to build some 500cc twins, which they offered as a customer motor to
teams in the class. (It’s hard to imagine that, not so long ago, there were
than many teams in the premier class, but there were.) Anyway, the Honda twin
also underwhelmed.

The experience of 250GP riders in F-USA in the ‘80s, and
twins riders mixing it with four-cylinder riders in the 500GP class in the ‘90s
proved that bikes that are capable of putting in similar qualifying times on a
clear track are not necessarily inherently competitive in the cut-and-thrust of
racing, where the way your bike makes power dictates cornering lines. To say
nothing of the braking advantage MotoGP bikes would have in a real race.

My guess—and that’s all it is, but it’s informed by
historical knowledge of natural experiments in the world of racing—is that even
the most dominant SBK rider/machine combination would finish quite far back
(close to last) in any dry MotoGP race. That’s not to take anything away from
the top riders over there; I am sure that if you gave any of the top six SBK
riders a few test days and a competitive MotoGP machine, they could ‘pull a
Bayliss’ and embarrass the prima donnas. I just don’t think they’d be able to use
an SBK bike to full advantage in a MotoGP race.

All that said and as noted above, it’s clear that MotoGP
bikes are not much faster than production-based bikes. That brings me to a
mental experiment I love to imagine, which is not comparing production-based
race bikes to the fastest premier-class racing prototypes; rather, it’s
comparing actual production motorcycles to premier-class bikes.

So… Imagine a time machine, big enough to take a current
production bike back in time. The question is, How far back do you think you’d
have to take the fastest current production motorcycle, before it would be
competitive in the top World Championship class?

About 15 years ago, I asked Freddie Spencer if he thought
that he could have put a then-current CBR1000 on the grid in a 500GP race,
during his racing heyday. He told me, “Not at the fastest tracks, like
Hockenheim, because we were already going over 300kph. But I think it would
have been competitive at the most technical tracks.”

At that time, Freddie was about 20 years past his 500GP
prime. So, you’d have to set the Gardiner Machine at about 20 years to achieve machine
parity.

Maybe some time this winter, I’ll parse the lap times at
open-class sport-bike launches—to look for a launch with some fast ex-racer
testers, held on a track that’s been in use in the World Championship for
decades—and make an informed guess about the fastest current production
motorcycles. How far back I’d have to take one in the Gardiner Machine, before
it would be competitive with premier class bikes of that day. I’m not sure it
would be more than 20 years.

And that’s incredible, really. I mean it’s just a mental
experiment of course, but it clearly illustrates the fact that we’re living in
a Golden Age of production bikes, especially when compared to production cars.
Any guy with a regular job can go buy an open class sport bike that is as fast
as the fastest prototype motorcycles were a few decades back.

The fastest production cars are an order of magnitude more
expensive, and more like 40 or 50 years behind F-1 car lap times.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Do you know a motorcycle rider who also reads*? Now is your chance to buy them an author-signed and inscribed book for Christmas! (*Or in the case of my trivia books, poops?) Here's the deal:

U.S. mailing addresses only! (I used to be able to send signed books around the world, but USPS international rates have gone up to the point that, now, it's prohibitively expensive. Sorry!)

You pay the cover price, I pay all shipping and handling. Books are shipped in padded envelopes, via USPS, for delivery at least a week before Christmas.

Paypal only! (You don't need a Paypal account, you can use any credit or debit card.)

Choose the book (or DVD) you want from this drop-down menu...

Want a specific inscription?

Feature length documentary film. Standard definition. DVD $24.95

Over 400 pages. $22Sale $18

$20 Now in development as a feature film
with screenplay by Todd Komarnicki (Sully)
to be directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day)

Great illustrations from BMW's archives plus the inside story of the development of the famed R90S Superbike, straight from Udo Geitl. BMW's entire racing history, up to but not including the S1000RR. $34.95Sale $17

Another 365 days-worth!
More bathroom reading for bikers. (And you know, #2 is even more satisfying than #1!) $12.95

A year's worth of reading on the john. The perfect gift for any biker who reads (or poops).
Amazon's #1 Bestseller in the 'Motorsports' category last Christmas! $12.95

As the year winds down, and people focus on happy moments
like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, you might want to spare a
thought for something else on the horizon: tax time.

If, like me, you have a self-directed IRA, that might mean
you’re about to convert saved cash into equities. And if you’re a motorcyclist, you may want
to buy some motorcycle stock. The last year started off pretty poorly for the
two big American motorcycle companies, Harley Davidson (NYSE: HOG) and Polaris
Industries (NYSE: PII), the maker of Victory and Indian. However as of this
writing Harley-Davidson’s shares have staged a pretty strong recovery.

A year ago, HOG was trading at around $48 per share. It’s now at well over $57, having returned over 18%--roughly double the return of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Pretty impressive, especially considering The Motor Company's lackluster sales results. Even beleaguered Polaris has had a strong month or two, clawing its way back to around $85 from a low of $75.

Most of my self-directed IRA holdings are in accounts at TD
Ameritrade, which offers an easy and intuitive trading platform. The downside
is that it’s pretty much limited to equities trading on U.S. exchanges. That
makes it difficult to invest in the other major motorcycle manufacturers—but
not impossible.

Quite a few foreign motorcycle manufacturers’ shares are
traded in the U.S. in the form of American Depository Receipts. That’s to say,
shares in those companies are initially purchased on foreign exchanges, and
then traded on U.S. exchanges or over-the-counter.

There are two kinds of ADRs--sponsored and unsponsored. In a sponsored one, the company itself acts as the agent; it's a way for foreign companies to have easier access to the U.S. capital pool. If some other agent--e.g. and investment bank--just buys shares on a foreign exchange and then trades the receipts in the U.S., that's an unsponsored ADR.

Some ADRs track the
underlying company’s share prices almost perfectly, but others are not
particularly liquid. If you prefer to invest directly, you can use Fidelity to trade
on Japanese and European exchanges. There are pluses and minuses to each
approach--you'll have to research tax implications and fees and decide what's best for you.

To invest in Ducati, you need to buy shares in Volkswagen
(Ducati’s parent company.) Ducati represents a trivial percentage of VW’s business though,
so your investment is really in a huge car company (and one which, by the way,
has a cloud over its head at the moment.) Volkswagen trades on the Frankfurt
exchange and is currently about in the middle of its range for the year.

Motorcycles represent a larger percentage of BMW’s business,
but BMW still sells at least 10 cars for every bike. BMW also trades on the
Frankfurt exchange and Xetra. BMW shares are well down from a high of over
100EUR a year ago, though prices have recovered somewhat in the third and
fourth quarters (so far). BMW's ADRs each represent 1/3 of an underlying share.

Honda shares have lost 25% of their value in the last year,
and the venerable company’s three-year chart’s not much better. But Ford Equity
Research just put out a report rating HMC a ‘strong buy’. I believe Honda’s
year end is in June, so if this report is solid, and Honda’s year looks good as
of next summer, this might actually be a good time to buy.

Suzuki’s recent year has been forgettable, but pull back and
look at the company’s five-year chart and you’ll see a reasonable return to form. Stock
trades on the Tokyo exchange and with over-the-counter here in the U.S. as
SZKMY; each receipt is for four of the underlying shares. I’m not crazy about the U.S. ADRs; I've been put off by large differences between bid and ask prices which makes me think there's a liquidity problem. But, that’s
just me.

I see Suzuki as one of the companies best positioned for increasing
sales in the developing world—personally I’d just pay the higher fees to buy it
in Tokyo, rather than here in the U.S. (By contrast, I have no problem owning
Honda’s ADRs, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange.)

There are two different Yamaha companies: Yamaha Motor Corp.
(Tokyo: 7272) and Yamaha Corp. (Tokyo 7951). It would be easy to buy the wrong
one! Yamaha Motor Corp., like Suzuki, looks better when you take a longer view.
ADRs trade over the counter as YAMHF. Not much of this trade in the U.S.--only a few hundred shares on a typical day. And, although it dropped below the general market's return earlier in 2016, it's done quite a bit better than the market as a whole so far this year.

Last but not least, Kawasaki Heavy Industries relies on
motorcycles (and related products, such as quads and watercraft) for about
one-fifth of its revenues. It’s number 7012 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and
ADRs trade here as KWHIY. It’s been a crappy last two or three years for
Kawasaki investors; you would have been far better off just buying a motorcycle
in the spring of 2015, since the stock’s lost about half its value since then.

That said, some investors see the big K as a long-term
strategic investment. You can buy it now at something close to it’s three-year
minimum so if you really believe in the company, it’s not a crazy play.

As a motorcyclist, have you invested in any particular motorcycle companies? If so, which ones and why? Tell me in the comments!